Field of Art
The disclosure relates generally to medicament device usage, and more specifically to device usage, analyzing adherence with respect to medicament treatment plans, and providing information to patients and other parties based on that analysis.
Description of Related Art
Asthma remains a significant and costly public health problem. In the United States, more than 22 million people have the disease. Worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates the population with asthma may be 300 million, and predicts that it will rise to 400 million by 2025.
Despite the development of new medications, rates of hospitalizations and emergency room visits have not declined. Each year in the United States the disease causes approximately 2 million emergency department visits, 500,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths. In addition, asthma is responsible for an estimated 15 million missed days of school, and 12 million days of work. Total annual costs to US health insurers and employers are greater than $18 billion.
The majority of these exacerbations could be prevented with currently available treatments, however, only 1 in 5 asthmatics has the disease under control. Newly revised national guidelines urge doctors to more closely monitor whether treatment is controlling everyday symptoms and improving quality of life. Physicians, however, have few available tools to assess how well their patients are doing day-to-day. An increasing number of physicians have begun to use periodic, written questionnaires (such as the Asthma Control Test) to monitor patients and determine their level of control. These instruments require patients to accurately recall and report the frequency of symptoms, inhaler usage, and activity level and restriction over some period of time (usually two to four weeks). As a result, these questionnaires are subject to error introduced by biases (recall), different interpretations of symptoms, and behaviors (non-adherence), and only provide information at the time they are used.